The Commissioners Court is considering paying the person who serves as bailiff in district court $50.00 per day. The Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff or the Constable serves as the bailiff. The $50.00 will be paid in addition to their regular salary. Is there a problem paying them $50.00 per day if they are on duty when they serve as the bailiff? Or does the person have to be off duly to receive the pay?

Shane, I may be way off base, but your commissioners' plan looks odd. In our county, the Sheriff has detailed one of the deputies as the bailiff for ALL court appearances and hearings. He doesn't get any additional salary for that.

What Is the reasoning? Most deputys think that being a bailiff is a lot easier than patrol. The lazy ones might take a pay cut so they can sit around in the air condition.
If the theroy is to avoid overtime pay they are out luck.

We are a small county. We have two deputies and the Sheriff. Right now the Sheriff or a deputy does the bailiff work. However, they are not paid for it, no extra salary and they do not come to every court hearing. Next year, a bailiff will be required to be in the courtroom at all times when court is going on. Being the bailiff will be there only job on that day until court is over. They will not patrol until after court.

Money is tight here as I am sure it is in a lot of other counties. There will be no raises this coming year. The county can use the �security fund� money to pay for a bailiff. This will allow the Sheriff and the deputies to receive a little more pay that will not cost the county money out of the general fund. I suggested to the commissioners court to bump up the salaries for the Sheriff and the deputies a set amount for the bailiff work. They wanted to do the payment every time they did the job. So the Sheriff and the deputies will rotate who does the bailiff so they can all get some extra pay.

It strikes me that you are going to have some FLSA problems. I think their time in court would count towards their 40 hours a week (I don't think it makes any difference what pot of money they are getting paid out of). You also are going to have to take out social security, retirement, withholding, etc. I haven't researched the security fee issue, but off the top of my head, I don't see a problem with the County determining the cost of the extra hours needed for bailiff duties and putting that money from the security fee account into the Sheriff's budget. You probably would have to run this by the auditor to get the mechanics. Then whoever did it would get paid for the time, either straight time or overtime depending on how many hours they had worked that week. That way it wouldn't come out of the general fund, but it would give them the possibility of overtime. Depending on their salary and how many hours they spend in court it might be more or less than $50.